Welcome to this meeting of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. This is the seventh oral evidence session of our BBC royal charter review inquiry, and today is the day we get to quiz the BBC themselves. We are joined for the first time by Matt Brittin, the director general of the BBC, and, not for the first time—he is a frequent guest of the Committee—by Dr Samir Shah CBE, who is the chair of the BBC. Gentlemen, welcome to you both. Thank you so much for joining us. Matt, I will start the questions with you, please. In your staff email, you listed your three priorities and talked about editorial excellence, being clear on your priorities and making “the strongest possible argument for our future”. What is your argument for the BBC?

Thank you. I am just six and a half weeks in, so I have been doing a lot of listening and learning, but before joining I had the chance to tour the country and see what the BBC is doing on the frontline, from local radio to drama productions, in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, and I think the creative engine and powerhouse for the UK is a key part of the case for the BBC. I am thinking of its reach for audiences. If you think about it, it’s quite remarkable, when we have infinite choice in our pockets, that the BBC still reaches 94% of UK adults every week. That is pretty remarkable. It is also pretty remarkable that, despite some of the recent issues, it is the most trusted news provider domestically and internationally. I see those as huge strengths. However, we are in a week when ITV and Sky are merging; Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount have merged. There is shifting consumer behaviour around media, and the concentration in power that you heard about from other witnesses—the concentration of power in some of the American and Chinese players—means we are at a critical moment. I see the jeopardy for the BBC, but I also see the strengths. The final point I will make—I will be snappy, as you suggested, but I am happy to expand on this—is that the reason why I ultimately decided to join the BBC at this time, because I could have done other things, was that I genuinely believe in its mission. I read the 100-year history. The BBC has been at the forefront of innovation in technology, creativity and journalism for over a century. I believe it is needed now more than ever. In a world of concentration of power and disruption by technology, British values and truth, and British creativity, are more important than ever. We are announcing today that the World Service or the BBC internationally has reached over half a billion people a week, so we have a huge role to play in the world that is looking for this kind of truth and creativity, as we do in the UK.

The fact is, though, that a growing number of people, particularly younger people, just do not see why they should be paying for the BBC, because they do not watch it, or think that they do not watch it. What would your argument be to them?

You are absolutely right: if 94% of adults every month are in touch with the BBC, that suggests that people use it more than they might realise, but only 80% of households are paying the licence fee. What I see, coming in fresh, is that the BBC is locked into yesterday’s model of consumption—the licence fee being payable on linear television and iPlayer—when the world has moved on. Consumers are living in tomorrow’s world today, so we need to look again at the mechanism for funding the BBC as part of charter. Obviously, the BBC’s independence and future depend on having universal, sustainable and scale funding. That is really important. I think the BBC is still relevant to young people, but it has not been going where the audience is. Coming from the world of technology, I know that very well. Progress is being made, and I am delighted to see that BBC News is now the most subscribed English-language news service on YouTube, with over 20 million subscribers. So the BBC has made some progress, but it needs to go further. It is held back, I think, by the straitjacket of the current licence fee mechanism, which is obviously no longer fit for purpose.

You mention your background in big tech; you have a great commercial pedigree. How do you think you can bring that to bear on being able to convince people that the BBC is a modern, forward-thinking broadcaster for the future?

It is really important and one of the key principles. I said on my first day—actually, just before I walked through the door—that my priorities personally were making the case for the BBC, editorial excellence and velocity, by which I mean speed, but in a direction and not in a circle. That is about getting closer to the audience, simpler as an organisation and faster to the future. On being closer to the audience, if you look at young audiences, they spend five times as much media time on YouTube as they do on any linear television, and that is happening the older you look, almost up to my age bracket. That shift is happening. I noticed that Carolyn McCall, the CEO of ITV, said on the announcement of the merger with Sky that change is exponential. It is happening incredibly fast. What I can bring is a sense of how to operate at greater speed in an uncertain but fast-changing world, which will require us to experiment more, probably to partner with other people and to be focused on tomorrow’s world. Also, I think that some of the arrangements under the charter that will be reviewed are to do with requirements around the old ways of working, which can hold an organisation like the BBC back. Part of what we have to do is to readopt the pioneering spirit of the founders of the BBC around technology, although I think it is unlikely that building our own technology in every respect will be sustainable. Thinking about the case for the BBC today—I will be brief on this—the audience value is enormous and we need to sustain that. There is a second case, which is the economic impact. I’d love to come on to that because it is big, and I can share some of the report that we are publishing today. The third case is sovereignty. The BBC is the biggest funder of original British content today; people around the world want that content and want those values, but we are being disrupted by a small number of very big and very powerful tech players. I know about this because I came from that world, and I think it puts at risk our ability to create content, our ability to fight misinformation and our ability to distribute the content that we create to audiences.

What do you say to those people who say: “He's a big tech guy. He understands how you drive viewers, he understands how you get eyeballs, he understands deep-rooted commercial philosophy, but he doesn’t understand the BBC’s public service ethos”?

It is a very fair question. I think that my job at the BBC is to provide leadership and to create the conditions for brilliant editorial, technical and creative people to do their best work. You should ask Samir, but I think that is why the board decided to appoint me. I am not a novice when it comes to journalism and programmes, but I am also not an expert. However, I have had experience of leading large organisations through the change of building partnerships and in thinking about responsibility. I will not go into much detail about my time in technology, but I led the approach for Google partnering with large news publishers around the world to ensure that they could sustain their content in a digital environment, and Google became the biggest funder of journalism through its advertising programme. I have always cared about that. I care genuinely about public service. I am British; I have always lived here, and the final thing that I would say is this: some of you may experience this effect, and people watching might as well, but when you travel internationally and you are British, people often thank you for the BBC, even if you have nothing to do with it. That is one of the reasons why I chose to join it.

But the question remains very slightly unanswered. You know that you are going to have to make some very difficult and tough financial choices. You already have; you have already had to lay off people. When push comes to shove and you have to make a decision between continuing to fund something that has real public service value but dwindling viewer numbers, where does your decision fall?

You are absolutely right; when I came in, the need to save 10% of costs had already been announced. I have been working with the team and we have made the first set of announcements. There will be more to come about how that restructuring happens. What I have asked the teams to do is to have some key principles in mind when they make those difficult choices, because we are no longer at the stage where we can say, “Well, we have programmes that nobody watches,” or, “We have functions that don’t do everything.” The BBC has made real progress and the National Audit Office has credited the BBC for getting overheads to a sensible benchmark level. The principles that I have asked our teams to look at are, first and foremost, to preserve and maximise audience value, to reduce duplication where there is duplication, and to simplify the BBC so that it can move faster. You can see in what the teams have already announced that that is hard. We will have to stop making some programmes that are very popular with people, because there are more popular programmes. We will have to look again at how much we do in terms of the linear output; with radio and television, as traditionally known, the audiences are shifting faster and faster. The point I would make is that the BBC is not unique here. Sky and ITV have merged because they need scale. Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount have merged because they need scale. On the production industry side, Banijay and All3Media have merged because they need scale. The BBC also needs to preserve its scale if it is to make the interventions that it needs to in the market. To pick one titbit, I have been surprised and impressed by many things that I have seen since arriving at the BBC. One is the impact of its work across the UK. Of its network spend, 60% is now outside London and 55% of its staff are outside London too.

I will move you on, because we are going to come on to outside London in a minute.

I was just getting excited.

You can get excited with Jeff, because he is about to ask you the next question.

It is obviously one of the most important questions that needs to be resolved in the royal charter. I just want to step back one moment before I answer. It is really important, and it has come through very strongly in the conversations and witnesses you have heard, that the BBC is much more than just a broadcaster. It is a public good; it is a national asset. Our relationship to the licence fee payer or the funder is not simply a transactional one. We are not Netflix, saying, “You pay £9.99. You get these programmes.” It is more than that. We provide a national asset, and we need to look at that funding model in those times. As a result of that basic thought, it is really important that the funding model is two things. First, it has to be universal, so every household has a stake in the BBC. That makes the BBC a national asset. Secondly, it needs to provide enough scale, as Matt has so eloquently put, to make the BBC big enough not only to deliver its purpose, but to be able to compete in this new world that we are facing. We can talk further about the kind of funding options we have open to us. It is, of course, for the Government to decide. As you took evidence from your witnesses, I was really interested to hear the household levy being surfaced again. In our view, we are open to any conversation about the funding model. The household levy has many advantages. It is enforceable. It takes out lots of the costs that come with the current licence fee. It can be fair. We are open to that conversation. But we recognise that, first of all, the Government ruled it out in the Green Paper. If it is not the household levy, the important points are universality and scale. As Matt pointed out, the licence fee has always evolved to capture changes in behavioural consumption. We all know that consumption behavioural change is moving away from linear to on-demand platforms, so we need to capture that. That movement needs to be captured in the modernised licence fee, and that will include other platforms. Currently if you watch ITV you still have to pay the licence fee. It is those same principles, but the important thing here is that a modernised licence fee must capture the way people are now consuming content, particularly the younger generation.

It is not for us to be disappointed. We recognise the Government’s own views on these things. I will repeat what I said before, the household levy would solve a lot of problems for us, and we are certainly open to it, but we reckon that there are some political issues there. The reality is that it would be difficult to get through Parliament; it would require new legislation. It is really a matter for Government.

I have looked a little bit at this. A number of European countries have moved to a household levy for the reasons that the Chair mentioned around shifting behaviours. As you say, the advantages are that universal collection can be simple. In different places it is done through utility bills. You can imagine broadband or mobile or electricity being ways to do that. That gives you universality, which is one of the things we need on behalf of our audiences. It can give you scale because it is universal and so on. It can reduce the costs for us to collect the licence fee, which are currently about £190 million a year. I suppose it gives you an option, which is that if 80% of households are paying today and you went to 100% of households, the licence fee could be lowered for everyone, and Government could make calls on lower-income households or younger viewers, which I think is all quite appealing. As Samir says, the challenge is that that has been ruled out. I can understand the concerns about household costs of living and so on, but I think it has merits, and others agree. Extending the scope of the existing mechanism has merits too—it is simpler and probably would not require legislation—but one of the challenges there would be the collection, which is already challenging and would become even more challenging as more young people are used to just clicking and accessing content, so it becomes harder for us to enforce. The conversion rate on enforcement actions has been going down, as you know.

Samir, Pat Younge told us that he thought the household levy was ruled out by the Treasury. Do you get that sense as well?

I do not know about the internal workings of the Government. I think that the household levy could be seen as effectively another tax, and I imagine the Treasury has a view on that.

What about other ideas for funding that were also taken off the table? The Government said we were going to look widely at different ways of funding this, and then immediately took half a dozen of the options off the table. What about the idea of a streamer levy, for example? How would you feel about that?

That is partly the extension of scope. As Samir said, a streamer levy is basically the equivalent of today’s, “If you watch ITV, you pay.” Today’s equivalent would be, “If you watch Netflix—and arguably YouTube, TikTok or any other streamer—you pay.” I think that is compelling, in the sense of extending it to reflect the reality of today’s audiences. The challenge is: how many of those people would pay, how much would the cost of collection increase, and what would that do? The biggest challenge I see coming is how to run an organisation to deliver what the charter asks us to deliver, and what we might be asked to do in the future, with unpredictable but declining income. Structurally, that is really challenging. We need to attract and grow the best creative talent. I noticed you had James Graham here, who is brilliant—we spoke to him just last week with the board. Nobody else would have commissioned “Sherwood”. You heard from Steven Knight; nobody else would have commissioned “Peaky Blinders”. To attract and develop the kind of talent we need for the BBC to thrive requires a degree of sustainability—so, universal scale and sustainable, within the context of a reset charter.

Whose role is it to communicate changes to the licence fee, what it covers and who should pay for it? Is that the Government’s role or is that a role for you guys?

I’m sorry, could you repeat the question? I didn’t quite hear it.

You have a case to make for why it is important that you are properly funded, what changes to the licence fee are going to be made, what is going to be covered and who should pay, but what I am sensing is that you are very much saying, “We’ve got our ideas, but actually this is going to be a governmental decision and we’ll live with it.” I am just a little confused about whose job it is to then communicate that to the public.

It is Government’s job to determine all sorts of aspects of the licence fee: the level of the licence fee—

I understand that, but whose job is it to communicate that to the public and to make the case for it?

Right, yes. We are, as you might imagine, heavily into discussions with DCMS. Their officials and our officials are having a series of meetings over the summer, because as you know, the Government are preparing their White Paper. We are talking to them—I think we are having about 16 meetings over the next two months. We will be talking to DCMS, officials about all the issues we would like to communicate to the Government, because they will prepare a document for the Secretary of State and the Government, and we want to be part of that conversation.

Samir, that is a word salad. Matt, just tell me: whose job is it to communicate the changes to the public and persuade them?

As I understand it, six and a half weeks in—I think this is correct—the licence fee unit that is operated for the BBC does the communication and collection. I visited the main operations base in Darwen. I did a little mini-internship for a few weeks before formally taking the role, so I went to see the licensing unit, I sat and listened in on calls with people who were seeking to no longer continue payment, and so on. I think it is the case that it is the responsibility of the BBC, through the licensing unit, to communicate and collect.

So you are in a situation where the Government will decide what is going to happen and how, and then it is your job to sell it.

As it stands, that is correct. If you moved to a household levy—although that has been ruled out—then arguably the collection mechanic might be through a third party, such as a utility company. But as it stands today, all that unit’s activity is door knocking and mailing, which is a huge part of their activity—you have to physically send letters to people, which means we are exposed to the monopoly provision of post—which comes to about £190 million.

The first thing to say is that I worked in a business funded by advertising for 20 years. Traditional advertising is in structural decline, and the reason why ITV and Sky have merged their network businesses is partly and largely driven by that. You are fishing in a diminishing pool of advertising. I was heartened to see the Sky-ITV merger announcements about their commitment to UK content and regional news, which is something that all the public service broadcasters hold dear. The impact of the BBC taking advertising would be to take it away from others, and that would have a devastating impact on the economy. I think the same to an extent with subscription; there is a difference in the model, and universality is a fundamental part of what is made the BBC successful today.

Probably the best thing to do to understand that, rather than me hypothesising, is to look at what ITV does on commissioning—that is a commercial broadcaster. If there were the funds available, the BBC would look more like ITV. There are some things that only the BBC does. I was stunned by this: every week, 3.5 million children see “Newsround” from the BBC when school is in, and 80% of secondary school pupils use Bitesize in their learning. Some of those services would be at risk if you were in a more advertising-funded model. Local journalism is something that is dear to my heart, having worked in local press in the past. In the 20 years since I stopped working in local press, the top three local press journalists have gone from about 9,000 journalists to 3,000. Some of these things would be very hard to fund under a commercial funding model for the BBC, even if there was enough funding to go around across the public service media, which I do not believe there would be, because that is diminishing and shifting all the time.

The consequences of a subscription model would be what Matt has said but even more so. We would be making programmes to drive subscription, and therefore we would not be making programmes that do not drive subscription—that is just logical. There are lots of things that do not drive subscription. Look at the subscription models and look at what Netflix does; we would not do children’s programming or local programming, and our drama would become increasingly narrowly focused on things that drive subscription. All sorts of things, like local storytelling and James Graham’s programmes, honestly would not happen. We would stop being universal, and we would stop being the BBC that we know.

I totally agree. Coming fresh, many of the people at the BBC have said, “Try to keep that outsider mindset”. One of the things you see is that people inside the BBC are often mired in the things that could be better, but when you see it from the outside, there is strength in audience reach, it won 12 BAFTAs, and it is the biggest funder of original content in and across the UK. There are so many strengths that you would lose if you moved to a commercial funding model, not least that there would be less funding.

Morning, gentlemen. Matt, what more could the BBC commercially do if its borrowing limits were increased? If those restrictions were not there, what could you do?

You are talking about what is now called BBC Studios, which is basically producing shows for the BBC and other people. It is distributing shows that have already been made or rights deals with people internationally, and it is running a number of things like BritBox and other streaming platforms internationally. The opportunity to grow that is significant. We are in a bit of a cyclical moment. When I talk to the team at Studios—bear in mind it has just been six and a half weeks—they say that there was a period of time where the global streamers were hugely funding content, because what they were trying to do is say, “Here’s our show. Come and sign up to our platform and stick with us.” That game is over, and we have seen multi-billions spent on streamers that have yet to turn a profit, particularly American streamers. That means that the market is squeezed at a time when production costs are growing at around 7% year on year, partly driven by energy and various other kinds of cost of living factors. There is scope to grow Studios’ revenues. More borrowing would allow us to be longer term in that, which could be useful, and it something that we should be looking at within the scope of these discussions. The more that the BBC can draw on commercial sources of funding, the more it can offset what has happened with the licence fee. If I may, I will add a minute on this. The Committee probably understands it, but I think it is something that I needed to get clear on arrival. In the past 10 years, the BBC has lost £1.2 billion or £1.3 billion of licence fee funding. About 60% of that is due to price freezes, which are Government interventions, and to taking on the over-75s and some of the World Service costs—so 60% of the drop in our income comes from policy and 40% from a reduction in households paying. The BBC—Samir, Tim previously, and the management team—has chosen to invest as much as possible in content and channels. It has kept as many services as possible running, spending cash reserves and dividends from the commercial business. The reason we have had to make savings now is that that game is over. We can grow studios and we will continue to try to grow them, but in a tougher market. All the factors that have led to the mergers I mentioned are factors that we face as well. That is one of the reasons why we have to deal with making tough cuts and choices at the moment.

I will make one final point. You have explained the challenges quite eloquently. How much of a priority is it for you to relook at, rethink, recalibrate the borrowing limits?

I could not tell you that in the rank order of priorities, but coming in with a commercial background I understand completely the public service remit, and we need to do everything we can to fund that as well as possible. I am looking at all the ways in which we could drive income for the BBC. Obviously, the charter settlement is the most significant part of that, because licence fee funding is by far and away the biggest single source of funding, but we could do things through studios, commercial growth potentially funded by further borrowing, further partnerships, and opportunities to monetise some of our services around the world. That sort of growth in the BBC’s world reach is significant, and could be further monetised. Then there are arrangements on rights. One of the things that surprised me on arrival at the BBC—I was sort of aware of this, but I grew up in a world where the BBC made everything itself and therefore had control of its rights and the archive could be exploited—was that when those rules changed some years ago, it created the independent production sector: the BBC does not have control of the rights of most of the content that it airs. That is one of the challenges here—how do we get value for licence fee payers in that world? The production sector is wonderful, and you had representatives here who were very positive about the BBC. We want to continue to support the independent production sector, but we should look at how to make sure that in doing so, we also get value for licence fee payers.

Matt, we have done quite a few evidence sessions now, and a recurring theme seems to be about sweating the assets and about whether the BBC is doing everything it can with some of the property—intellectual property, physical property and so on—at its disposal. A few weeks in, what is your headline view of that?

As you would expect, because of the squeeze on funding, I am looking at everything we can do on cost that does not impact programming and audiences. I looked into property; actually, over the past 10 years, the BBC has reduced its square footage across the country by 50%. I think we can go further. You and I have talked about the utilisation of offices around the country and I think we can do more, potentially opening up some of them. In Birmingham, we have the new Digbeth building, which is bringing a lot of value to the economy. We could open those things up to creators. One of the opportunities for the BBC is to get closer to the world of online creators and bring them in. It is also the case that, although we still need studios to produce great drama and some of our news output, we need much less capital to produce great content. Anyone who has been on a podcast—almost all of us have—or streamed to their constituents will know that you can now, with a smartphone, reach a global audience. I think we need to look at ways in which we operate on a lighter-touch basis. In a world of cost challenge, I want to make sure that the BBC supports local content and local news. One of the ways of doing that would be to find ways to save costs on some of the linear output, but to reach more audiences more locally. That would be a win if we could do that.

I refer you to some of the evidence we got from Dino Sofos from Persephonica. His view is that you should be using the assets, rather than scaling back on them—looking at them and at how they can be a way of driving revenue.

Yes, I have spoken to Dino, and we have just had his podcast festival up in Sheffield—some of my colleagues and many of our podcasts presenters attended. I think he is right. Coming from my world of technology, it was not just about technology; YouTube was a huge platform for creators and creativity. Connecting the two is something that we can do. There are many amazingly talented British creators who want to work with the BBC. I am looking at doing that.

Thanks very much for coming in today. Picking up on that theme of the size, scale and shape of the BBC going forward, do you think the BBC needs to do less? Should it be smaller?

It depends on the remit in the charter. You could definitely have a BBC that did less. I do not think it would live up to its current remit on some of the things I mentioned such as education and so on. We have not touched on the local democracy reporting service, which is dear to my heart. On the second day of my little internship, I visited that team in Birmingham. They are supporting 1,000 local media outlets with journalism, and about 165 jobs have been created around that. You might lose things like that if you were a smaller BBC. We need to be more efficient. A challenge we face is that, being universal, we have to run all our linear services, as well as all our digital services, as well as go on third-party platforms. That increases the cost, in order to be universal.

Could I add to that? I think it is a really fair question. We have been constantly addressing what we should stop doing. The important thing, from both points of view, is that, as Matt has said, we are transforming the BBC to be a player in this new digital landscape that we are facing. That transformation will change the nature, size and shape of the BBC. It is important that that is part of an overall plan. There should be a strategic vision of the nature of the BBC in terms of the new charter, so that the actions being taken to stop doing things are part of that plan and not some arbitrary, “Let’s cut this.” It has to be organised, strategic and in the public interest. If the public is not interested in something, we should think about it, but it always has to be part of the plan. We are moving from a linear position to a digital one. That will change the shape of it and be the right size to deliver the remit that the royal charter will ask of us.

Matt, in your opening comments, you talked about the BBC being a trusted voice, especially in news. We will talk about the World Service later, but given the cuts being made to the workforce and shape of the BBC, and given that it is a priority for the Government to ensure that the BBC stays a trusted voice, how are those cuts being done fairly? For example, in the news department, some figures are pointing maybe to a 15% cut to the staff within the news team. How do you protect the trusted voice and battling of misinformation that really only the BBC can do?

I am really aware that BBC news and journalism, although there have been some issues in the last year or so, remains the most trusted. Since I have been there, I have seen two high-impact “Panorama” investigations and Ed Thomas’s investigation of high streets resulting in policy change. There is some incredible journalism going on there. No cut in our staffing or services is easy to make. The best way we can do this is to have two things. First, we need a set of principles, which I mentioned earlier: to minimise audience impact and maximise the highest-value things we do for audiences. Secondly, we need to look at ways to reduce duplication and make the BBC more agile and fit for the future. You are absolutely right, though—I think we are in a moment of real jeopardy not just for the BBC, but for Britain and for public service broadcasting. It is a unique asset for us and that is why a universal sufficient and scale funding solution is really critical. We will have to continue to make cuts. Can I just address your question on news specifically? Various figures have been reported in the press. Each part of the BBC has a different cost structure. In news, we make our own programming. We are our own content top to bottom, from the journalists you see on screen or listen to on radio through to the trucks, the technical services and the distribution. In other content, typically we are commissioning from other people, so the cost structures are very different. You are right that, if you are having to make savings, they are more likely to be savings to do with people and programmes where we are making our own programmes. On the content side, we can scale back on some of that investment. Indeed, Kate Phillips, our brilliant head of content, announced a reduction of about 8% in the budget for independent productions, which obviously impacts the sector, which is a huge source of value to the UK as well.

I suppose the question will be: what is the public service value in outbidding commercial broadcasters for things like “Scooby-Doo” when you could be reinvesting in British content and news?

I am smiling because I asked exactly that question. When I was growing up—maybe some of you are a similar age—the biggest shows on the BBC were “Dallas” and “Dynasty”. They were big imports.

There were also only four channels then.

Absolutely, but they were importing a lot, even in a world of four channels, with guaranteed audiences in the 17 million-plus range. Where we are today is that spend on buying content like that is less than 5% of the content budget. You mentioned “Scooby-Doo”, which I also loved when I was growing up, along with “Newsround”. Why would we buy “Scooby-Doo”? Because people come to us for “Scooby-Doo”, but they stay for “Horrible Histories” and “Newsround”—they stay for some of the public service content. So in selective places, I think that has value in the strategy; I have understood that. I do want to look at that further in the context of the savings we need to make, to make sure that we are getting the balance right, but it is part of a deliberate strategy to serve audiences.

You said you had asked the same question about “Scooby-Doo”. Who did you ask?

I asked my colleagues. I asked the content team under Kate Phillips, who is responsible for making those purchases.

I presumed colleagues; I was not thinking that you were asking yourself.

Sorry; I was not sure what you were asking. Kate Phillips.

You were asking the buyers why they were buying it, or the strategy people?

I asked Kate Phillips, because her team are responsible for both the strategy and the commissioning of content and I wanted to understand why that was a practice. I thought the answer I got was compelling, but I also need to look at that particular less than 5% of spend. Is that the right justification in a world of reducing resources?

We are not going to turn this into a whole hour about “Scooby-Doo”, but you say people come for “Scooby-Doo” and stay for “Horrible Histories” and “Newsround”. That may have been true in a world of channels, but you are not in a world of channels now, are you? You are in a world of select and click. Do we have evidence that that is true? What surprised this Committee was not that you bought “Scooby-Doo”, but that you outbid others, using licence fee money.

As I say, that is something I am looking at reviewing as part of the cost savings. I think there is data to show that audiences do follow through on viewing like that. Among families, linear TV is still a key part of our reach, so we can’t not do that. I think iPlayer, when it launched, was an excellent product. It launched in the UK ahead of Netflix. One of the things that I noticed about the BBC on arrival—this is an organisation that pioneered radio and its content, pioneered television and its content, and pioneered streaming, but in recent years the investment in content has been a little bit at the expense of technology. I would expect iPlayer to be able to do a better job on recommendation.

I think we are probably going to come back to iPlayer a bit later in the session. May I bring you back now to Bitesize, which you mentioned? I think Bitesize is a great product; I have been known to use it myself. I think it is widely appreciated by many of its users and recognised as a quality product, but what do you say to people who say to you, “Well, that may all be true. It’s just not your job”? You are a broadcaster. What are you doing creating online bite-sized content in a marketplace that does exist? Schools buy content in to support their programmes of study. The Department for Education even funds Oak National Academy, which is not exactly the same thing but covers the same broad range of curriculum areas. You are a broadcaster, Matt Brittin. Why are you in that market?

Three words: inform, educate, entertain. The middle of those words is educate, and if you ask the—

Why are you not running comedy clubs, then?

Let me just answer your question. In the context of education, Bitesize is accessed by 80%-plus of secondary school children. Actually, Bitesize is in jeopardy because of AI. Bitesize is in jeopardy because people are using it for emergency physics learning—I don’t know whether you remember that, but I certainly do; I wish we had had Bitesize at the time—but what is happening now is that because of AI, people are going to chatbots for that and they are not getting the same quality. What I would love to do—

Forgive me for interrupting. I accept all the stuff about it being a great product and all the rest of it. That is not in dispute.

You are saying we should not do it.

The question is just this: is it your job? Entertain, inform and educate—sure. But British Broadcasting Corporation is also the name of the organisation.

One of the challenges is broadcasting—what does it mean to be a broadcaster? It used to mean radio. Then it meant television. Then it meant television and streaming. Now, actually, a lot of our audience is coming to us for online services. Think about the World Service—we will come on to the World Service. A big share of our World Service audience and growth comes from online access. It is a bit like television. What is television when we are watching video? These words get in the way of understanding what we need to be doing, which is serving the audience with public value.

You said the BBC is a broadcaster. I said earlier that the BBC is much more than a broadcaster. It has a role to play in our cultural and civic life. That is really important. That is why inform, educate and entertain is part of that. Indeed, in terms of media literacy about what children receive, it is even more important that the BBC is there informing and educating our younger generation through Bitesize and everything else, to help them to navigate what is a really difficult world they are in. The BBC's role is as a national broadcaster and a public good.

I think you have conflated two things there. Media literacy and discerning verifiable news sources and so on is different from the discussion about Bitesize. My question was more that, at a time when you are reviewing the licence fee and the size and scope of the BBC, that is definitely a matter for debate.

That is all a matter for debate under the charter.

You mentioned the World Service, and I want to pick you up on something you said in your introductory words about how the BBC now has a global reach of half a billion users a week. Those are not like-for-like statistics. When you see charts that show this huge growth over 10 years, you are comparing an old world of people tuning in to—albeit not exclusively—a half-hour programme on the BBC World Service with “Today”, when the user only has to have seen your content for 10 seconds during the course of the week to count as reach. Is the BBC World Service gaining market share or losing market share to RT, the Chinese service and indeed the Turkish service?

There is quite a lot wrapped into your question. One thing is measurement. You are absolutely right that there are different ways of measuring across different platforms. One of the things I am looking to do at the BBC is to clarify and simplify what we mean by reach that is of value. In the world of TikTok, when they are selling advertising, every second counts as a view. Obviously, that is nonsense from a BBC standpoint.

I think someone dwelling for 10 seconds is in your half-billion figure.

As I say, one of the things we need to do is clarify what we mean by that. Obviously, when you look at the numbers, the averages hide a huge impact economically. It is undeniable that the BBC’s reach internationally with this half-billion figure is relevant. We know that people who consume the BBC—and that is a weekly figure—are more likely to invest in the UK, more likely to travel to the UK and, critically, more likely to come here for education. We really need the best people to come here for education in order to fight back against the AI tyranny that is coming from the concentration of power. I accept your point about measurement. It becomes quite difficult to measure across all these different services in a consistent way, but it is definitely part of what we should look at.

To be fair, in what you just quoted there was also a question about direction of causality. I do not think that you can demonstrate that someone decided to come and study in the UK because they tuned in to a BBC programme.

We have a survey that says that people who consume the content are more likely to do those things.

I agree, but there remains a question about the direction of causality. It is also possible that people who are interested in the English language and interested in Britain are more likely to both study in the UK and consume BBC content.

It is correlation not causality.

Indeed.

Welcome to the Committee. You are currently still in the honeymoon period, I guess.

There is quite a lot in the in-tray.

Yes, it is a big old load of stuff you take on—39 local radio stations that people treat as their friends.

That is just in England.

Yes—children’s TV, World Service, all this stuff. You come from a commercial background, which is welcome in some ways, but rather than asking what bits you are going to cut, I want to ask why you think the financial situation got so bad. From day one you were sending these emails of doom that sent a shiver down the spine of every staff member. Is it that they need better financial planning? It sounds like you are having to do all these things that we talk about with regards to black holes and tough choices.

Just to be clear—I do not want to repeat what I said earlier—Tim Davie had already announced prior to his departure that the BBC needed to make 10% savings. I explained that over the 10 years, the £1.2 billion to £1.3 billion reduction in licence fee funding, which is about 24% of licence fee funding over 10 years, was mostly due to price freezes and increasing the work the BBC was asked to do by the Government. About 40% of that reduction was then due to a reduction in households paying. That gap opened up as a result of those changes. The BBC had chosen to spend its cash reserves and dividends from its commercial business on plugging that gap. We have reached the point where that is no longer possible.

How can you avoid that happening again? It sounds like it is a lot worse than expected, from the emails you have been sending. Is there a plan to tackle evasion? At the moment, the people who do pay are subsidising people who watch it for free on iPlayer. Could you do a more explicit advert that for, effectively, pennies every day, you are getting all this?

Yes, it is 50p a day, or £15 a month. That compares with The Times, so you can have a newspaper for £15 a month or all of the BBC. The universality is the difference. The licence fee unit and our teams already do a lot to try to close the gap, but the challenge is that the measures they take are proving less effective as generations change and habits change. That is one of the reasons that the funding settlement under this charter is absolutely the heart of the BBC being able to continue to operate in the way that it does at scale. Yes, we can and should be doing as much as possible on licence fee collection under the current model, but it is yesterday’s model. It is a busted flush. It is no longer fit for purpose, and that is why we need to make the case for the BBC and a shift in the licence fee model.

The 1% offer has been rejected by the unions, I think it has gone to arbitration—

You are talking about pay now.

Yes. How do you motivate your staff—I am ex-staff myself, and members of my family are still employed by the BBC. They say to me that they see their colleagues being axed and slashed, so morale is low, they feel ignored at the town hall meetings—

At what, sorry?

The town hall meetings—I do not know if you have presided over one of those yet.

I have conducted two.

They feel ignored. They submit questions that get batted away.

Please encourage them to email me directly: I am answering all the questions from colleagues. You mention pay. In a world where we have to cut £0.5 billion from the BBC’s budget—the equivalent of more than the entire film and drama budget of the BBC, more than the budget for news, more than the budget for sport, so it is a significant amount of saving—I think colleagues accept that we will have to make changes. One of the things I am most impressed by is that colleagues at the BBC are there because they believe in the mission. They know it is tough. They see what is happening around the world—these are very informed people. We are in negotiation; we have not reached the end of the negotiation on pay. It is reasonable to offer an increase, but we cannot afford an increase of the scale that people might like. My job is to do two things: to come in and make sure that we are operating within the envelope we currently have and to argue for a better funding solution for the future, but also to reshape the BBC, as Samir says, for the future. That depends on what the charter asks us to do, but you are absolutely right. If we want the BBC to continue to be brilliant journalistically, creatively and technically, we need people to want to come and work there and build careers there. That is what I am looking at as we are trying to make the strategy for the future.

I would also say that the £500 million is a big number, but that is on top of £700 million earlier when I first joined the BBC. What that really reveals is the funding gap. There has been a freeze in the licence fee, and that is why it is so important that the new funding model actually deals with that—that it is a stable revenue stream, which it is not at the moment. As the revenue stream goes down and the costs go up, the gap gets bigger and bigger. We need to fix that, otherwise we will be in a constant state of trying to cut things to meet that revenue. What will fix that is a sustainable, at scale, reliable revenue stream. I cannot emphasise enough that the new funding model needs to do that, otherwise we will be in a constant cycle of having to cut to live within our means.

How many people have taken up the opportunity of having a licence fee since you added QR codes on the world cup matches?

I cannot give you the precise numbers, but thank you for prompting me. Some of the measures they have been doing have been under the world cup, pushing the fact that you need to pay a licence fee to watch this. There has been a lift in licence fee payment. We have seen that with other big sporting events. By the way, if you are interested, I had a bet with Samir on Monday on how many people watched the match in the middle of the night: 9.1 million, the biggest ever audience at that time of day, watched live. Another 5 million people watched on catch-up on iPlayer and another 1.1 million people watched on BBC2. It is a good example of something that brings the nation together, even in this world of technical fragmentation. Part of what the BBC does is bring people together, and we really value that role.

Have you made any calculation of what percentage of those 9 million people do not actually have a licence fee?

If you were to assume it is in line with the total population, we have got 94% of adults watching, but only 80% of households paying, so that is the size of the gap. As I say, if we look at a mechanism, ideally all the people consuming would be paying, or you would just make it fully universal as it was previously, when if you bought a radio, you paid a licence.

It is fairer to the 80% who do pay the licence fee, given that 14% of people do not pay but consume it, so I think it is an attempt to be fairer about what we produce.

The BBC charter states: “The BBC must be independent in all matters concerning the fulfilment of its Mission and the promotion of the Public Purposes”. The BBC’s independence from the Government has been highlighted as of great importance to audiences. A public survey by the BBC, “Our BBC, Our Future”, found that 91% of respondents agreed that it is important that the BBC is “independent from the government of the day”. Dr Shah, the Culture Secretary appears to agree with you that the BBC should have a permanent charter. With a permanent charter, what aspects of the relationship between the BBC and the Government would still be debated, and how often?

As you know, as the chair, I act in the public interest, and there is nothing more important for the public, as you point out from our survey, than for the BBC to be independent—that is its principal reason—and particularly to be independent of Government. In my November speech in Leeds in 2024, which the Chair will remember, I said that we should consider whether we should lose the 10-year limit and have a permanent charter. It would benefit the public, the Government and the BBC, because then we will not have to face an existential crisis every few years. That just is not a very helpful thing. It is not helpful for many reasons. Let me just identify two or three. First of all, just let me say that this is not special treatment. As far as I am aware, every single organisation created by royal charter does not have a time limit; it is only the BBC. Why? There is no reason for it. We have negotiations and discussions with Government, starting with the question, “Why should you exist?” That is not a helpful start to any relationship. The other reason is a practical reason. This cliff edge means that we cannot have any long-term strategic planning. We cannot get value out of having discounts for longer contracts. We are not asking for a permanent charter to shy away from accountability. Some of our other ideas are about strengthening accountability. What a permanent charter does is both strengthen the independence and, attached to some of our other ideas, make us more accountable to the public and to Parliament. The problem with the 10-year rule is that the Government of the day can simply and passively not produce a charter, and the BBC ceases to exist. I am not suggesting the BBC has a right to exist—it does not—but if you decide to abolish the BBC, there should be a national debate involving the public and Parliament, and then Parliament can legislate to revoke the royal charter or not. It needs to be a public, proactive decision, not something that happens by default.

Okay, but let us go back to my question: with a permanent charter, what aspects of the relationship between the BBC and the Government would still be debated and how often?

A great deal. This is about accountability. We are not talking about not discussing things. We would discuss, over whatever is the right time period, its remit, its scope and how we are regulated, because the world is changing dramatically, and as the world changes, we need to be able to have a conversation with the Government, the public and Parliament about how we change the BBC. I do not want to change any ability to rethink the point, purpose, remit and scope of the BBC. What we do not want is this cliff edge, which just really is a very damaging and limiting thing.

There have been some controversies about appointments of non-executive BBC board members, including Sir Robbie Gibb. Do you support the appointment of non-executive BBC board members by an independent body?

I raised this very early on in my speech: one of the important things is to demonstrate independence, and in terms of optics, when the Government of the day appoint five non-executive directors, including the chair, that damages that notion of independence. It is really important that those appointments are made publicly, openly and transparently, and involve the Government and national Parliaments. They should be open, like any public appointment. That will help us to not just appear, but be more independent.

If the BBC continues to be funded by a licence fee, do you support the licence fee level being determined by an independent body?

I do. The Government have two very strong levers. One is the determination of the quantum of the licence fee, because that affects our ability to scale. Also, the Treasury receives the money gathered and takes whatever top slice it wants. Famously, George Osborne took out all sorts of money. He top-sliced it and gave us less. Those are two very important levers. I think an independent body should determine it.

I looked at some of the facts on this because I am interested in understanding. Freezing the licence fee is effectively cutting costs, because if production costs are inflating at 7% per annum, as they are now, you are effectively losing 7% in one year. In nine of the last 16 years, the licence fee has been frozen. If you are trying to run an organisation, whatever the overall settlement is, you need some level of predictability rather than having to cut. Dr Huq rightly asked about cost cuts, wage rate increases, how we get the best talent and so on. Operating an organisation is a challenge when you are subject to that level of uncertainty around income. The licence fee level and the fact that it has been frozen for nine out of 16 years is a challenge.

There was a report a few days ago that the BBC has abandoned hope of clawing back the £200,000 that was paid to Huw Edwards. Is that true? How do you think licence fee payers will feel about that?

I have already said that I think Huw Edwards ought to return the money. He has not done so. I read that he is seeking some kind of redemption; a very good step, if he had an ounce of moral rectitude, would be to return the money. He has not done so. I think he should.

But is it true that you have abandoned hope of getting the money back?

No, we have not abandoned hope. This is a serious amount of money. It belongs to the licence payer. It does not belong to Huw Edwards.

We were talking about board members. Do you have any plans to get more employees on the board? Would you support that? We talked about people feeling disenfranchised at times and the coalface of what actually works well in an organisation. What are your thoughts on that?

I heard that in the discussions. It is a really interesting observation. We already have a mechanism by which we hear what young people think about what the BBC does because it is their future. I think that is quite important. We have a next generation group. My thinking on that is that we do not hear enough from them about what they think about it. We need to listen more. Worker representation is another good area. I do not want to be negative, but it is quite a big task for one member to represent all of the 20,000 employees.

It could be more than one.

I absolutely agree that, just as much as we need to hear what the next generation thinks about what we are doing in the BBC, we need to hear what our workforce is doing and make that a bit more precise and systematic. I support the idea of building that.

How do you currently monitor how employees feel?

There is an employee survey that tells us how employees feel. It shows some progress on things like culture, which Samir and others have put in place. There is quite a big programme around making people feel safer in calling out bad behaviours. I have seen data that suggests real progress on that, both in terms of cases and employee sentiment. That is one lever. On the earlier question, I am open to reshaping the BBC in a way that modernises it. I have seen lots of different models for employee representation across Europe. They may or may not work in different ways. I think it is a fundamental part of your leadership task as a manager to be well engaged with employees. That is why I spent six weeks going around the country listening to people on the frontline. I met almost all of our 1,000 apprentices, who were brilliant. We have a next generation committee of rising talent. The whole of the Exco—the management team—listened to them the other day. I am coming in fresh and looking again at how we engage. In my previous role, there was a lot of employee engagement. Hearing directly from employees at senior management level is fundamentally important. I have one final point on that. In a world where organisations are changing fast and are subject to much greater uncertainty, whether it is Government or companies and organisations like ours, the more you communicate, the better. You need to hear from the frontline in order to lead properly. That is important. How we resolve that is up for grabs.

I have said this before, but one way I do that is by having a lunch every month with about 15 junior staff, where there is no agenda. I have done it over 20 times now, and I get a very interesting response about what the BBC looks like from where they are. Quite often they raise the culture review—that is something that they are now aware of—but everything comes up. It is interesting that when it first started, people were not shy exactly, but they did not quite know what was going on. Now that I have done it and it has gone around, they come straight in and tell me what they think. It is a really helpful and useful way to hear from them.

I totally agree on the point about engagement with employees, but we all know that on the board there is a lot more information that is shared, quite often on a confidential basis. I am talking about making sure that there is that next level of engagement. Obviously you work out the numbers and who it is—I am not suggesting that we prescribe that here—but I am wondering whether or not in principle that principle would be something. I am being shooed along by the Chair, so a yes or no answer is absolutely fine.

Yes.

It is for the chair to decide that, not me.

What is the rationale of inclusion for the 15-person staff lunch? I do not think I know anyone who has been to that. You have thousands of employees, so how do you pick the 15 people?

It is a good question. When I first started, I was debating whether it should be people from one division or a mix. I do not pick the people; I just want them to be—

It does not seem a very good sampling strategy. I think you should go wider. Do you know what I mean?

It is a way in which I can hear directly from junior staff.

But how do you pick them? What is the sampling strategy?

I ask the people who run the staff to bring people to the lunch.

I have taught before, and when you have an Ofsted inspection you select the students the inspectors speak to.

I do not want people to think that they have been specially chosen to perform in front of the chair.

I just do not understand how they are picked—that is all I am saying. What is the logic of who to include?

Dr Huq, it is one way, in an array of ways, to make sure that leadership hear from staff. A widespread staff survey is another way. Going to employees from all backgrounds across the country and from all functions is another. An informal approach is another. You are absolutely right that one of the most important things in an organisation is engagement with frontline staff, and the leadership team knowing what it is like on the frontline.

Matt, I do want to say that it is refreshing having you here, because your predecessor was always in that chair apologising for some mistake or something—

Well, I am only six and a half weeks in.

Yes, but it is good that we are getting off to a good start with you. With your predecessor it was Tim Westwood, Greg Wallace and so many things—then obviously Trump and the cherry-picked dossier was the end of him. You have signed up to CIISA—the bad behaviour body—haven’t you?

Yes, I actually have a meeting on that later today or tomorrow.

It would be great if that had some more teeth. They have spoken to us before, but it was a closed meeting.

I think some really good progress has been made on culture, both on what employees feel about it and what I see, but there is a lot more to do. Any large organisation needs to constantly work at that. It is never a completed project to ensure that the culture is inclusive and supportive, and that the behaviour standards are high.

I want to ask about what happens when mistakes occur. Sometimes we have a situation where there is a production company, and because of an unclear chain of command, it is unclear whose fault something was. Everyone sees it as being the BBC’s fault, because that is what they see when they switch a programme on—it comes with your branding, so people do not understand. Should there be more vetting around those kinds of things, and transparency as well?

Sorry, what was the question?

What are you going to do to ensure that you are not always sitting in that chair apologising for some mistake, like the last guy did?

It is a very good question. The first thing to say is that no organisation can rule out mistakes completely; I think we need to start with that premise. However, on my first day, before I went through the door, I said the focus would be: make the case for the BBC, editorial excellence and velocity. On editorial excellence, I spoke to several previous DGs, several previous heads of news and the previous deputy director general to understand how things had operated and what I needed to do. I opened the role of deputy director general on arrival and four weeks later appointed Rhodri Talfan Davies to play that role—somebody who has been at the BBC, began as a journalist and has a good understanding of the organisation. That is helpful for me, as somebody coming from the outside. The remit there is to assist in ensuring that when there are issues, whether it is operational, editorial or corporate, they are immediately gripped within a rigorous framework. One of the challenges has been that if things happen, there has not necessarily been enough accountability and clarity on it. He is going to help to ensure that we put something in place. If you make a mistake, it is really important to be quick. One of the things that I am looking at is velocity. If we make a mistake, we should own it, we should apologise for it immediately, and then we should say what we are going to do to try to understand what went wrong or to address it. That is one of the things that I have been very clear on from the start, so watch this space—I hope that we will live up to that promise.

I want to turn to the editorial guidelines and standards committee. James Harding, who gave us evidence and is ex “Today” and now at The Observer—

He was the editor of BBC News, I think, and The Times.

Yes, so he knows his stuff. He said there is a big concern that this “star chamber”—it is only four people deciding on the entire news output of your corporation—has a disproportionate amount of influence, and Robbie Gibb, who is a very partisan figure, wields a lot of influence on it. I know there are two new people on it, but I think they are a bit corporate and not journalists.

I want to clarify one thing before Samir clarifies what changes he has made to the editorial standards committee. It is not the role of the editorial standards committee to commission journalism or to run journalism. It has a retrospective review role on thematic areas. The news organisation is run, ultimately, by me and the head of news—we are in the process of appointing a new one. The role of the board committee is very different from commissioning and running the news day to day, but you can maybe clarify, Samir.

I thought their role was to hold the news executives to account.

Yes, the committee is there to ensure that the editorial standards are maintained, but not on a proactive basis. They are not saying, “You should be doing this”; they are reviewing what has happened.

The changes to the editorial standards committee were part of a series of changes made in the light of the events of last year. We had a number of changes of personnel, policies and practices. The editorial standards committee is one of them. We reviewed its working and where it failed. The new editorial standards committee has a different remit and a different scope. It has broadened its membership.

There are two new people on it, I have noticed.

More people have been added to it, to get a variety of opinions. It has more teeth, in the sense that action will be taken, it will be quick and decisive, and we will be tracking that action. There is a wholly new approach to reviewing output.

James Harding said that you have this closely identified partisan figure as the most senior person on the editorial standards committee, because Deborah Turness and Tim Davie went. The two new appointments both seem to be corporate people. I do not think the committee is reflecting the staff base, the panoply of people and the different opinions that it could.

I cannot agree with that. I think the people who now sit around the editorial standards committee are very serious, experienced people. The executives will be that—

One is from PwC, and one is from—

But those are the external advisers; they are not members of the committee. We have changed the members of the committee, both the NEDs on it—

Is it possible to get the detail of that? I am a licence payer, and it is unclear to me.

I will give you the details.

I am disappointed that I sent an email to you, Matt—or to the director general’s address; I do not know who answers your emails on your behalf—and the answer I got did not resemble what I asked for. In the minutes, there is a plan for Reform voters, and it talks about a presentation being seen. I wanted to see the presentation slides, but they were not provided. The answer I got said, “I replied to Dame Caroline on so-and-so date,” but it was not a Dame Caroline thing; she is a separate person from me. I was asking to see the plan for Reform voters. Is there a plan for all voters? Surely trust is falling—there are issues with everyone.

May I answer your several questions? First, I got your letter last week. Thank you for alerting me to your concerns on that.

I just thought it was nice to tell you in advance, rather than spring it on you.

Thank you. I looked into it immediately. You had asked about a conversation at the board that was reported in minutes that referred to Reform voters. You had written to Tim Davie, my predecessor, about this, and he had responded to you. I looked at the response, and I agreed with the response, which I then referred you to. I think what you are asking is whether the BBC looks through a lens of voting intent when it looks at its audience. Actually, that is one of many lenses that we look at—we look at background, geography and ethnicity—because our obligations are to serve audiences universally. I believe that they have looked through the lens of voting intent from time to time, when they felt that they were adrift of things, but it is only one of many lenses. You specifically asked to see confidential board papers. That is not a practice that we would support, because boards need to operate using confidential papers, but I can assure you that I have seen no evidence of bias in that area in the time that I have been there. I have asked about that. You may not be happy with the answer, but unfortunately that is the answer.

I thought you were stressing transparency, so I am disappointed we cannot see—

No company or organisation would reveal all its board papers. I think that that is a reasonable practice.

I will finish here, but I will just say what the danger is. We all want growth, so if we just go for cuts—I totally take your point that Nadine Dorries should not have frozen the licence fee, because that was catastrophic for—

Many Ministers did; it was not just one.

Yes, in the last Government. But if you have cuts, you get fewer licence fee payers. People might say, “Oh, ITV’s studios are much nicer than your tacky one with a few plants in Salford.” People see that it is not as high quality, so if you get cuts, you get fewer licence fee payers. You have a plan for Reform voters, people like GB News and Reform are emboldened in their campaigns to defund you, and then mistakes get made in the news and this is what happens. It brought down your predecessor. The news team is overstretched.

I do not want to leave the impression that there is a plan for Reform voters. There is a plan to ensure that, using multiple different lenses, we serve our audiences in line with our charter obligations, and that is what we do. We might look at a whole array of different ways of understanding behaviours—by the way, those behaviours are changing very fast, not just in media habits, but in the polarisation of society. One of the key roles we need to secure for the public service remit of the BBC is to bring people together. That is what we are looking at doing.

May I take us back to some of the scandals? As Rupa says, we are certainly separate people, despite the plain similarities, but she is right, and she raised a number of the issues, the scandals, that have hit the BBC over our time as a Select Committee. One of the things that Stewart Purvis, former editor-in-chief of ITN, said to us is that when a problem first arises, the new director general will have to make a decision about whether he will speak for the BBC or whether he is going to ask someone, a deputy, to speak on his behalf. Have you given any thought to how? Inevitably, one day, there will be an issue that arises that you have to—

There will be something unforeseen for sure.

Have you given any thought to how you might choreograph a response to future issues?

Yes. I appointed a deputy, two or two and a half weeks ago, and we are just working through what the best way is to address the issue of that role and how it operates in any kind of crisis or incident, whether editorial, operational or corporate. His role will be to lead the response on behalf of the corporation—not necessarily the public response, because that depends on the seriousness; I would expect you to want to hear from me in the case of something very serious, but all kinds of issues come up all the time. Given the scale of the BBC and its output—also, rightly, given the scrutiny that it has, uniquely ahead of anyone else in the media sector—we need to make sure that we have that sort of approach to understanding the risks and what the appropriate response is, publicly and operationally. We are working on putting that in place. It is not fully established, because we are only just getting started. I think that is important. That is part of us dealing with the response, but the other part is about ensuring that the conditions are there, so that we can take big risks and be bold in our journalism and creativity, while being held to the right standards that you would expect from the BBC. We want to make sure that we have the conditions in place as well on that. I have been impressed by things like the editorial guidelines, but the world is moving so fast that we need to modernise what we do. I have talked, for example, about how, when criticised, it is hard for me to pull data on how many times we covered a particular story, so I want to ensure that we can do that better and faster.

In your earlier comments to us, you mentioned velocity being one of your catchphrases.

Hopefully it is something I can bring; I hope it becomes more than that.

I think that that actually is the difference between an issue becoming, in some cases, a big issue or a lesser issue—the speed at which it is dealt with.

Yes. It goes down to a small level. I do not want to reignite this, but a “Newsnight” presenter misquoted one of the political leaders recently and realised at the end of the programme that they had done so. They and the programme editor contacted the person directly and apologised, we apologised publicly and we pulled the episode immediately from iPlayer. I think that is a good example of owning something, taking immediate action and moving on. That is a small example, but it is part of the ethos that we need to have. The other part of the ethos, which is really important to me, is that when you are scrutinised, that is an opportunity to improve, not an opportunity to be defensive. We should rightly and robustly defend ourselves when we think we are in the right and we have the facts to hand, but we should also look, when there are problems, at how we can better improve. I think that is part of what the BBC has tried to do, but I need to make it an absolute priority in a world of polarisation and more challenge, and also more risk.

Do you take learning from the misfortunes that happen to other broadcasters? For example, if you were Channel 4, would you ever bring back “Married at First Sight”, or would you keep it off the books?

I am not going to speak for the CEO of Channel 4, but that was exposed by brilliant journalism by “Panorama”. It was a horrific experience for the brave women involved, and credit to them for coming forward. By the way, when that “Panorama” aired—I had not seen the content prior—I immediately asked our team, “Where are we on safeguarding on these kinds of programmes?” We do not have anything like that programme on the BBC, to be clear. We have pretty good guidelines, which are constantly updated, and when something like that happens, the team looks and says, “Is there anything further that we could do here?” I think that is right.

If you were in their shoes—I am not asking you to talk for Channel 4, but if, say, for example, you had a programme like that on your books and it had had the coverage that that has had—what would your instinct be? Would it be to bring it back or to just leave it?

I think you are asking me to speak for the CEO of Channel 4. I am not going to do that.

No, I am asking you to talk hypothetically about what might happen. In your role, these issues will come up; I just want to know what kind of director general you are going to be. Are you going to be a risk-taker, or are you going to play it safe?

Fair question. I think it is unlikely that we would have a programme like that on our books, because of the BBC. Our remit is about having those standards across all our output—due impartiality and care and so on—so it is unlikely we would have something like that. But if we had a programme with an issue around safeguarding, absolutely I would look at: “How serious is the issue? What do we need to do to correct it? And is it sufficiently serious that, actually, we should stop running that programme and we should look at the roles of the people involved?” It depends on the seriousness, but, ultimately, no programme or presenter is bigger than the corporation, particularly a corporation that is funded by the public. I think that is why the bar is rightly higher for the BBC. The scrutiny is a high level of scrutiny. Sometimes that is very polarised, from people with a commercial interest in how they are covering the BBC, but I accept that responsibility. I come into this with my eyes wide open.

Matt, there have been some concerns about bias, particularly on “Question Time”. I will just run through some stats, which I know you will be aware of. Since the start of the year, Reform has had seven appearances on “Question Time”; until recently, it had eight MPs. The Lib Dems have had nine appearances on “Question Time”; they have 72 MPs. Rachel Millward from the Green party has appeared on consecutive weeks of “Question Time”. Is that something that you are looking to address?

Thank you for the question; let me just unpack it for you. I asked the team about this in respect of the Makerfield by-election, which happened soon after I started here. A complaint had been raised by one of the 14 candidates standing about not being on “Question Time”. “Question Time” has a panel of five, I think, so the way in which it selects panellists is a key thing that the team has looked at very closely. In fact, there was an Ofcom complaint because this was during an election period, and Ofcom ruled with the BBC that we had been fair and appropriate in the application of our guidelines. In the context of something like Reform, which you mentioned, with the MPs versus the representation, as you all know, the political situation is changing very dynamically, so we cannot just look at historical representation in terms of numbers of seats. We also look at things like vote share, intention to vote and so on, and the team has to make a judgment based on all of those factors. There are very clear editorial guidelines. In fact, paragraph 10.4.21 of our public editorial guidelines deals with elections—by-elections too—and integrity, and obviously there is a code of practice for candidates. That is always under very close scrutiny. It is a question that I have already asked. On Makerfield, I was supportive of our guidelines, as was the Ofcom adjudication; but we will need to keep this under review, particularly as the situation on elections and by-elections is very dynamic.

Can we expect to see a dedicated “Question Time” on the Clacton by-election if there is only one candidate?

What we will do is enforce our guidelines, which are written to take account of any number of candidates in a by-election. Two things kick in: one is our editorial guidelines, which I just quoted, and the other is the code of practice for candidates, which is required by electoral law.

Dr Shah, I come back to my question about Huw Edwards. You said that you had not given up hope of getting the money back. What are you doing to get the money back?

As you know, we have already written to Huw, to his lawyers. I can look back at what our latest one-to-one relationship is. I have certainly said it publicly. If you ask me what I think the chances are, I do not know; it is a matter for Huw, really. He should give it back, and we will keep pushing him to do so. I would think the licence payer would want us to do that.

The licence fee payer does want you to do that.

Absolutely, and I will do that.

There are two candidates in the by-election so far. Will Count Binface get the same amount of coverage from the BBC as Nigel Farage?

Let’s not speculate, because we do not know; I do not think a by-election has even been officially called yet.

But hypothetically.

I do not have the guidelines in front of me, but you can look at our guidelines, and we will happily discuss when the eventuality arises, including whoever is standing. I think that that particular candidate has been interviewed in the past. He may even have been interviewed in some of our output today—I am not entirely certain.

You may or may not be happy, but I am going to move on to technology and innovation. Matt, you said that technology is extremely important. What are the BBC’s priorities for developing technology and innovation, and do you think it should be for the public benefit or specifically linked to the aim of driving growth?

That is a great question. There is a lot I could say, because I have some background here. I have immediately asked for two things. The first is that we prioritise improving iPlayer and its recommendations. If you are making programmes for the BBC, it is right that those programmes are easy to find. For example, I really enjoyed the show “Small Prophets”, which had an audience of, I think, 8 million-plus. Many of you may have seen it. It was a great show. It was Greater Manchester-based—exactly what the BBC should be doing. By the way, it came from Mackenzie Crook, who was discovered on “The Office”; the BBC backed him in his first ever writing piece, which was “Detectorists”. I watched “Small Prophets”, so you would think that iPlayer would suggest “Detectorists” to me, but it does not. Some of our technology investment has fallen behind where it should be, so improving the audience experience in our digital properties is one key priority for me. Another priority is going where the audience is. We have to get comfortable with the BBC being seen on third-party platforms. The current licence fee straitjacket on funding—you have to be on iPlayer or linear to pay the licence fee—is in the way of that progress. We have to go past that, and make the assumption that the BBC has to reach audiences where they are. There is another piece there, which is ensuring that we appear on third-party platforms in the best possible way. I mentioned that BBC News is now at 20 million YouTube subscribers. They have done a good job with their branding. If you go to YouTube, the BBC News red is there, and people like Steve Rosenberg and our other key correspondents are there. Elsewhere in technology, we need to do an awful lot of other things. The use of AI will disrupt both the creation of content and the distribution of content. It is already doing so. The BBC needs to be careful in using AI in its content creation and journalism, but it needs to use it, because some of the tools are really powerful in those arenas. I have set up a group that is looking at what technology we approve at greater speed for use in our production processes, both journalistic and otherwise, and also what we do in terms of our distribution. Distribution has been complicated by chatbots, which circumvent people. Since I left, Google Search has now been augmented with AI summaries, so people are in some cases less likely to go through to the original content provided, be that from the BBC or from a newspaper. There is a lot to do in the field of technology. It has been a bit under-invested. We have a lot of legacy technology—radio masts and linear TV broadcasting. The challenge is how we maintain that—it has to support the audience—while we build these new things. There is a job to do there.

One of the things I worry about is online safety, particularly around younger people, and trusted news services. In using more AI, how do we protect people and protect the trustedness of the BBC?

The case for the BBC today is about what it does for audiences, what it does for the economy—£6.7 billion-worth of economic impact—and what it does for sovereignty. I have spoken to policymakers here and around Europe. Particularly in the last few years, we have seen lots of regulation here. There was the Online Safety Act and now we have the social media ban. I think that is in response to concerns about technology. Tomorrow’s battle on technology is all about AI. With AI now, I could generate something that looks like a Hollywood movie on my phone, with just a few words. That is a completely different world. Part of what we do within charter—we have not yet talked about this—is think about how the BBC plays its role alongside Government and other institutions in equipping the UK in the battle against misinformation, digital sovereignty, information security and providing skills for the jobs of the future. I grew up in the era of the BBC Micro. I know that our games industry in Dundee, the DeepMind team in London and many of the unicorns that the UK is producing in this area are led by people who grew up with the BBC Micro and were inspired to become software engineers through that programme. What is the equivalent of that today? How do we help people with the skills of the future? Damien asked the question about education. I strongly believe that the BBC has a big role to play in equipping ourselves in this battle for truth, which is already here.

Steven Knight told us that he thought the BBC should make the licence fee available internationally, so that anyone could play a licence fee and get access to iPlayer.

I would love that. Unfortunately, the complex rights issues we have around the content and its ownership means that we cannot do that. We do have a platform—BritBox—in the US, which is growing strongly. I would like to do more. On the earlier question about funding opportunities internationally, we need more money, but the fundamental issue is rights. I went to visit Steven in Birmingham on the set of “Peaky Blinders”, and he has done an incredible job capitalising on the BBC funding and then bringing in Netflix and sustaining that production industry. We have not talked enough about the role that the BBC plays in regions and across the UK.

Don’t worry—we are coming to it.

Good. I just want to make sure we have the chance to talk about that, because I have been most impressed by that.

Can I just say something about the rights? On the issue of accessing outside the UK being limited because of rights, the rights question will be really important as the Committee reflects on the BBC of the future. When I was an independent producer, I benefited from it. The BBC commissions, but I own the rights. That was very important in creating an independent sector. It has been incredibly successful. We have one of the best independent sectors, if not the best, but those companies are now consolidating into very large organisations with larger turnovers than the BBC. I think we should look again at the issue of rights and how the BBC can own more of the rights when it commissions programming so that, in a long-term, strategic way, we can get to a point where BBC output can be enhanced and people outside Britain can pay for it. We do a bit on commercial, but the issue of rights is really important, so that we can change the balance of who owns the rights of content.

Do you not think it is up to the BBC to develop more of its own intellectual property?

We are required today to go to the market for those things, which is great—that has produced the market. Banijay All3Media will be great—you heard from Patrick, who is brilliant. That is now a £5 million behemoth, not a small indie, so we might want to think again about larger and smaller indies and we how operate in that. That is not to slow down their investment in original content, but we should look again, in the world that we are facing into. Could I ask a small favour, Chair? I can see a fan over there that is pointing at the wall. It is now 27 degrees. Could we rotate it so the audience behind us and maybe Dr Shah and I could get some air?

We can do, but the fans play havoc with our microphones.

Oh, do they? Well, I would not want to stop that.

That is our issue with the fans. I do apologise to everybody. It is unbearably hot in here. That is why our fan has been pointing at the wall up until quite recently.

I should have known that technical question—apologies.

That is a great question. I did not intend to say, “You should come and watch more and more stuff like what you’re watching.” That recommendation engine on iPlayer should be a public service recommendation engine, just like scheduling in a linear channel. The scheduler was making a decision at the end of a big show: “If we put in this ‘good for you’ show, people will stay tuned,” though that is obviously a huge generalisation. I have been on iPlayer for 20-plus years, and the recommendation engine suggests some things to me that I have never watched and would never watch, so it is about trying to find something that learns more. One of the reasons that YouTube has been so successful is that it is quite good at that, so it is not beyond the wit of man to do something like that. Our version of that should be one that has public service value at its heart.

I have my own fan—I recommend it. On YouTube and moving into that space, the impact of YouTube and the migration of linear audiences on to digital platforms, particularly video streaming platforms, has come up loads of times during the inquiry and here today. Should the BBC be allowed to generate some revenue from advertising on YouTube?

At the moment, the BBC is not in a position to generate advertising in the UK. It has struck a partnership with YouTube around creating original content so that we can go where the audience is and learn more about how to do that well. I think that there is an opportunity internationally. Again, it is subject to rights issues—the same things. If we had BBC-owned content, as we do in news—news is quite hard to monetise because, as you might understand, advertisers do not necessarily want to be around stories to do with war—there is an opportunity to do more of that. One of the reasons that the BBC is so important is that, typically, 85% of YouTube viewing is of content made outside the country. One of the challenges for our culture and what brings us together is that, if people are on YouTube, 80% or 90% of the content they watch is from outside the UK. We can offer a sovereign media platform in the form of iPlayer, which is about content for you, made by you, made where you live and about your life.

I will come on to that in a later question. I want to go back to the relationship the BBC has with YouTube. How do we ensure that it is not an extractive relationship on YouTube’s behalf? How do we generate enough income from that to pay for the content the BBC is making to put on YouTube? You talked earlier about pivoting towards getting less kit to bring down the cost of production but, ultimately, how will you cover the cost of that? We are subsidising it as taxpayers and licence fee payers.

There are two pieces to that question, as I understand it. One is the opportunity to make money by being on YouTube. To be clear, the only revenue model for us on YouTube at the moment would be an advertising or subscription model, which is not something we do in the UK. YouTube offers us a low-cost way to reach audiences we are not currently reaching. I would be worried by that if YouTube was small but, having seen YouTube from the inside, it really does not make a huge difference to YouTube whether or not the BBC’s content is there. Its growth has been amazing and has not been fuelled in the main by public service broadcasting. As long as we feel that we are operating on fair terms, we need to invest in reaching audiences there—and on other platforms. A new type of YouTube will come out in a couple of years’ time, so we need to engage and understand how to use it on our terms.

What would fair terms look like?

At the moment, the YouTube model is that you upload a video and, if you get more than a certain number of views, you can make money from advertising. You can protect your own copyright on YouTube, and you can choose where the content is shown. The monetisation options are not open to us in the UK, given our remit. It is just like how the BBC can be found on Sky or Virgin Media; we go on third-party platforms already in the linear world and, if we want to fulfil our universal remit, we need to go on other platforms as well.

That is slightly different, because the path to your own native platform—the iPlayer—is far slicker on something like Sky or a connected TV, whereas YouTube is very much a walled garden. I accept that we have to be in the spaces where our viewers are and the eyeballs are, but how do we ensure that it is not an extractive relationship and that we have sovereignty and ownership?

We would not sign up to do anything unless we felt it was in the licence fee payer’s interest. What we can do on YouTube, as it is currently scoped, is on that basis. However, we need to keep our eyes open. Because it is so large, I can give some reassurance that, by being there, we are not creating additional audience value for YouTube, and we are not seeking to monetise it. On monetisation, YouTube pays out the majority of advertising revenue to the content creator and keeps the minority. If we are not advertising, there is an element of cost to it, not us.

The Government’s recent Green Paper on prominence is something that we have talked about on the Committee before, and prominence is something I know public service broadcasters are keen to have. What are the barriers to prominence on platforms such as YouTube?

I welcome the Green Paper. It is well argued and well thought through, both on prominence and on digital switchover and so on. Those are big issues that we need to look into at this point, not later. On prominence on platforms, it is a great intention, but the devil is in the detail. Imagine if the BBC were told by a third party or the Government, “This is the running order of ‘News at Ten’,” or, “This is how your evening schedule needs to work.” We would rightly push back. Now, this is not a publicly funded platform, it is YouTube; but it would argue that the algorithm and how it suggests videos are at the heart of what it offers and say, “That is the value we deliver.” I think there will be—we have seen it—a pushback against that. However, in this polarising world, YouTube and other platforms have things that we would regard as disinformation. We have to be there. The BBC is like the disinfectant for misinformation, if we get our journalism right—and I am proud of what we do, based on what I have seen. We have to be there, so we have to make that balance work in favour of the licence fee payer.

Do you think there is space for the Government to do more on disinformation on platforms such as YouTube?

There is an array of things that could be helpful. Ofcom has invested in expertise in this area, which is useful. For example, it could look at the transparency of algorithms on those platforms. It will not want to open up everything, but there are questions of how those platforms promote, how much is promoted, and in what ways public service media with a particular purpose could be deployed. There is then a question for the Government about the definition of media and what should or should not be advantaged on those platforms. It is important to develop the skills and, ideally, the insights. I noticed that the Secretary of State and DCMS have announced that they will no longer be on X, worrying about the way the algorithms have shifted to favour certain types of content. I looked at that and discussed it with my colleagues at the BBC. We strongly believe that we have to have things like BBC News on those platforms; otherwise, where is the alternative to some of the misinformation that we see on them? We also have to make judgments about platforms, at some point, about whether they are appropriate, given the rules of the game there. My view is that we should always keep under review the third-party platforms on which we appear. There will be new ones that we should be on, and there may be others where we decide to pull back.

I suppose the issue for the BBC in this space is that, ultimately, you are a media organisation, just as much as X or YouTube is a media organisation, but you are fighting different battles. You will come under the cosh if someone so much as misquotes a politician, and rightly so, whereas there can be a proliferation of misinformation on third-party platforms. You are fighting under very different conditions. Perhaps the ultimate thing is to push for parity, so that they should be treated as you are and held to the same standards.

That is a very good question about media regulation in the UK that I am not qualified to get into, but given our public funding—

You must have a view, given the great role you now have.

You are sort of asking whether smaller players, publishers, news publishers and TV stations should be held to the same standard as the BBC. That does not seem right to me, given that we are publicly funded.

No, I would argue that the BBC and YouTube are pretty big. In terms of size and scale—

YouTube is massively bigger than the BBC.

Then you should be held to the same standard. If you are being held to a higher standard than YouTube, is that particularly fair?

YouTube is an American-owned, ad-funded platform. The BBC is a publicly funded broadcaster and commissioner of programming, so I do think they are different. I would like to see high standards being applied to tech platforms, and things such as the social media ban and the Online Safety Act help to push in that direction. The more those pieces of regulation are enforced by people who understand the technology and are complemented by codes of practice that move faster than legislation, the better for our citizens.

Could I go back to your point about prominence? I would say it slightly differently. Prominence is a really important question. I go back to when the EPG became the way that we accessed it, and an Act of Parliament determined that, whatever the commercial needs of Sky around the EPG, the public service broadcasters—BBC 1, BBC 2 and so on—were the first five. That prominence would not have happened without legislation. I encourage the Government and welcome their commitment to prominence, but we should not just roll over because of an algorithm. If you want to preserve public service broadcasting, we absolutely agree that it needs to be on all these different platforms, but we also need to really encourage the Government to do what they can to ensure the prominence of public service broadcasters on those different platforms. That is really important, because they are going to take over the way in which we consume content and we cannot let that thought disappear.

Can I move us on? It is boiling in here and I want to get you out by noon.

May I add one thing for 30 seconds? I didn’t mention it because we got into platforms, but the other battleground for us is devices: televisions with connected TVs, and in-car when you are using your AirPlay or Android. Prominence in those environments is really important too. Otherwise, if you have these devices in your home and the app is not there, you are not considering it, just like Samir’s example of the EPG.

I am going to go back to the iPlayer conversation. You have answered some of the questions already, Matt, but what progress have you made following your offer to open up iPlayer content to other public service broadcasters? Just to bolt on to that, you and Dr Shah have mentioned the archive issue; I fully appreciate that some of the content is owned, but some of it is not and there is the opportunity still to increase scale and reach. Could you look at it like that?

There are two questions there. To answer the second one first, if we had more rights to run the content that we commissioned for longer on iPlayer, that would help in offering the audience more. That goes to the question about buying imports versus content we had commissioned but no longer had the rights for—that is part of what Samir was asking. The first part of your question was about commercial collaboration, or collaboration with others. There is an opportunity in the long run to have a sovereign streaming platform in the UK—I use that word carefully. Where do you go for quality UK content? The BBC is the biggest commissioner, but Sky-ITV remains an important commissioner, and others can too. The opportunity would be to build on the incredible reach and success of iPlayer. Nobody else around the world has anything like iPlayer’s scale and success. The other European broadcasters look at us with envy. We have had an approach and a discussion with Channel 4. In the world of this ITV-Sky merger, Channel 4 looks very subscale. All these mergers are driven by the need to have scale, and Channel 4 looks very subscale. One opportunity for it would be to have content on iPlayer in partnership with the BBC but continue to be ad-funded. There is an array of commercial audience, public service and technical issues, but we will explore that as quickly as we are able to because that will be important for public service media.

I have a quick question on that point that probably warrants a much longer answer: how can iPlayer rival YouTube?

It will never be able to rival the scale of YouTube. Funnily enough, if I can tell a short story, I spoke to Mark Thompson in my research about whether I should consider taking the role at the BBC, or applying for the role. He was the director general when I started at Google back in 2007, and he reminded me that we had had a conversation when he was in the process of launching iPlayer and YouTube was nascent. I had forgotten this, but we talked about whether YouTube could be the power behind iPlayer. Could you make YouTube and iPlayer a global public service media platform? It is a shame that we did not do it, because that was a great idea, typical of Mark’s visionary nature. What you have now—we have used this word a number of times—is a battle for scale. The challenge for us in the UK is that we are a small country. We punch way above our weight in media and the creative industries, and we need to make sure that we protect that.

I totally understand that battle for scale, but there is also the heritage and the back catalogue. We are talking about a 100-year-old organisation. You look at how Disney monetises, and we were talking about sweating the assets. I totally understand the rights argument, but should we back ourselves more?

The issue of rights requires a whole array of different conversations and regulatory challenges. But if you just ask, “Strategically what would you do?”, having the opportunity in one place to have a strong platform, internationally and domestically, with British content would be amazing. There are a lot of technical and legal barriers to doing that, but I think it is right to have that vision and ambition. Going back to my opening comments, this is a moment of real jeopardy because of the scale and, as you have heard from some of your witnesses, because the influence of a handful of US and Chinese tech players will dominate the creation and distribution of content in the future. Without that route to scale and sufficient funding, the little old UK—60 million people in a world of 6 billion people—will be underweight. Despite the metrics challenge, reaching half a billion people internationally is a good start. We need to build on that. We might come on to World Service funding, but in a world where 6 billion people are connected, it is a huge opportunity for us to distribute that brilliant content.

I will ask a final question, because I can hear the Chair tapping the table, so we are running out of time. How important is the 2034 date for the switchover from DTT to IPTV for the BBC?

I am very conscious of this; I have spoken personally to Ofcom about it and seen it in the Green Paper. The most important thing is that we can serve everyone. Whatever the date of switchover, we need to have a solution for those who have yet to switch. That is probably a combination of industry and content creators like ourselves coming together. Switching does mean that we can reduce a significant amount of cost that is spent on basically old infrastructure. If we can do that, that money can be spent on content, journalism and technical expertise to serve the public better. We could only do that in a world where we have solved the remaining households who have yet to switch. I am encouraged by some of the things that have been done. This movie has played out in the past with DTT. We need to get on with the planning now, and I welcome the Green Paper in that respect.

I forgot to declare an interest: I used to work at Channel 4 and in Channel 4 streaming, so I am very interested in this area.

Hence the brilliant questions on YouTube.

Thank you. Many moons ago, in the form of SeeSaw, or Kangaroo, there was a massive project to try to make sure that public service broadcasters were ahead of the game. It is a shame that did not take off.

I think the regulator put the kiboshes on it.

Yes—it was a bad decision, in my view. Given where we are and your points about scale and sovereignty, and the prominence of our own content and British stories, could the BBC be the flagbearer for bringing public service broadcasters together under one umbrella to finally establish something that can rival those global players?

I hope that we could. It depends a bit on the charter remit and the variety. We are held to account by an array of different things: the charter, the agreements under the charter, Ofcom and a whole array of other regulations. When we think about regulation in this respect, the world is moving so fast. Kangaroo was killed because people were looking in the rear-view mirror. The pace of change is so fast. We should be focusing on the outcomes we want regulation to deliver, not the operations. If an outcome is, “How do we get a scale public service media platform in the UK to work?”, let’s work back from that, rather than asking, “How do we solve this and this and this from where we’re starting today?” We need to have that vision. One of the things I hope to bring to the BBC, despite all the challenges, is a sense of vision and optimism about how we can serve the public for decades to come with the right ambition, through the charter, through your support and through the industry. We have an incredible industry in this country that punches above its weight, but it is at risk.

I was pleased to see that the Government included a consultation question about public purpose to support economic growth. As someone who was born in Salford, in the very place where Media City is now, I see huge economic benefits in the regeneration project that that has created, but that is not so in terms of creative opportunities trickling down to some of our local creative ecosystems. Will your plans to increase BBC activity across the UK include moving more commissioning and decision-making roles outside of the M25?

As you know, I have been very keen that we give some muscle to our Across the UK strategy, which of course we are all in favour of. We have moved a lot of programmes and production but, as I think I have said before, we need to move power out, and that means commissioning—making sure that people who commission programming have the money and the airtime. We are making real progress on that. Matt can fill in the detail, but it is absolutely right, just for the BBC to deliver its purpose of reflecting the nation. We will do that better if commissioning is also not concentrated in London but is across the country. We have just made two or three quite serious announcements about where we are going to be moving commissioning out of London. That is a really important start. If we are to realise the BBC’s vision of being across the country, power is what we need to move.

The week before last we announced two new commissioning roles outside of London, continuing the trend. On arrival I asked about this. The thing I was most impressed by—I was pushing to talk about it earlier—was how effective Across the UK has been so far. Already, 60% of network spend by the BBC is outside London. Already, 55% of staff are outside London. If we have the scale of funding to continue that, it is absolutely our ambition to do so. I visited Salford and did my all-staff call from there on my second day. I talked to the local mayor at the time and others about the impact that the BBC’s move there has had. I went to Cardiff and saw BBC Studios producing “Pobol y Cwm” for S4C. “Casualty” is made in Cardiff—it is actually going to be relocated to Cardiff within the show—and I saw six or seven independent productions that were there only because the BBC chose, in 2004, to produce “Doctor Who” in Cardiff. It created the skillset and invested over decades in that skillset, such that this money comes in. I want to make one little pitch. Today we published something about the economic impact of the BBC, and it suggests that the economy gains £6.7 billion from the BBC being here. Every pound of licence fee money that we spend has an impact to the economy of three and half times that amount. The effect of that across the country is that, as you have seen, it changes the way the BBC looks and sounds but also creates jobs that enable the Netflixes and others to come in and commission content too. I really support it and want to do more. It will be hard to do more in an environment of cost cutting, because it also costs us to decentralise.

Matt, to what extent do you value what the BBC does locally, for instance through local radio?

I visited a number of local radio stations in my sort of mini-internship, and it is clear that they are at the heart of the community. I went to Three Counties Radio and sat in on the breakfast show. They do a consumer show called “The JVS Show”. As I was there, a couple came in with a cake for the presenter, who had helped them to solve a consumer issue. Local radio stations are still at the heart of their communities. The audience for local radio is falling quite significantly. In the last few years the team have complemented it with a digital offer. We have seen that growth being quite strong. We are going to need to look again at how we get that mix right. If we move in the right direction with the right funding, I would like us to do more localised services, but that has a cost to it. It does not have to be the same cost as building transmitters and big radio studios, but I think we ought to find a way to go more local if we can.

Going back a little to the evaluation, you have given me the stats and you have a really nice glossy document—

There is a nice summary in there, so you do not have to read the whole thing.

Absolutely, but how else are you measuring what you are doing for audiences? I know—going back to trust issues—that people do trust their local news or their local radio station. How are you measuring that in order to know what you need to do more of?

A huge array of data is available to us from audiences, and the team look at that all the time in terms of improvement. We look at reach: how we serve different audience groups. We are underserving younger audiences, working-class families and some minority ethnic groups. We need to continue to work hard at that. Being on these other platforms is part of the answer. The creative content is also part of the answer—being more representative. A representation review done before I arrived suggested real progress but more to do. That is an example. We look at audience appreciation, we look at reach and we also look at our economic impact.

Matt, I understand what you say about creating more local output, but local media and print publishing is already quite a delicate ecosystem. A lot of our local newspapers now have a digital offer. To what extent are you aware of that and the inherent responsibility you have not to undermine that delicate balance?

I am really aware. Twenty years ago I worked in local press and I still know people who work in local press. I also on my second day visited Birmingham, where our local democracy reporting service is based. They produce work that is published in over 1,000 publications—I think half a million articles or something like that since they were created. So it is partnering with the ecosystem. But you also have to be cognisant of the facts. I think I touched on this earlier but, if you take the top three local news publishers, when I was working in local press they had 9,000 journalists. Today those top three have got 3,000 journalists. We are in a world where we have already seen a significant reduction of what local journalists can cover. I would love us to do more in those areas. There are a couple of ways we can do it. One is the funding to do it. Another is to partner with those organisations and others at greater scale—local content creators and others. We need to look at that. To do it we need to have sufficient funding.

I know that is a really important point because I know a number of local radio and newspaper journalists who are now your reporters at the BBC, so it is a huge pipeline of talent for you.

Many of our journalists started out in print. It is harder to do that now, but you might start out in a digital local paper. When I worked there, the internet was already under way and the shift of advertising from the homes and property and motor ads that fuelled the local press was already beginning. That is why we have seen it fall. Again, the scale of funding to support local coverage is really important.

Have you had any thoughts on what more you could do to support that?

I am six and a half weeks in and I am implementing savings. Right now the chances of us being able to do that under our current funding model are limited. If we were in a position where we had the scale funding, there is an array of things that we can do to build on the local democracy reporting service. I would like us to have more flexibility to partner with other commercial organisations, and then I could sit down with those kinds of publishers. Just like in the production arena where you have some very successful conglomerates, you also have smaller titles, and we must not forget the smaller titles. Some people looking at the democracy reporting service say that quite a lot of what it does goes to the bigger players, but that is because they have many more titles. We need to make sure we support the smaller titles. Also, there are some brilliant digital start-up local coverage services and some lessons to learn there. The BBC should not crowd them out. We should look at how we can complement and work with them.

Matt, one thing you said that I thought was really good was about learning from mistakes, building on them and coming back better. Another thing that I thought was excellent was admitting there is a problem in terms of working-class representation. What more will the BBC do to make sure we address that? I think this goes to the heart of problems with trust, with people not wanting to pay their licence fee and not connecting with a show because it does not sound or feel like them at times.

Part of the audience metric that you just asked about is understanding how many people feel the BBC is “for me”. That is one of the proxies for how we do. The first part of the answer is creative. We need to make shows that show you who you are, where you are. You heard from James Graham: a show about a mining town in Nottingham is something only the BBC would have made. But some big shows appeal to those groups as well. “The Night Manager” was one of our biggest shows last year—a brilliant show; many people appreciated it. It had quite a big C2DE audience. Of the 9 million who watched that show, a third were C2DE. The return of “Gladiators” was hugely popular, with 5 million people watching it. It is made in Sheffield. We are about to have “Celebrity Traitors” come back again. That is a huge show. Some of the big shows bring people together, but we also need to make sure there are shows about people and where they are from. My final example would be “Blue Lights” in Northern Ireland. It won a BAFTA for best drama and was mainly viewed in Northern Ireland. It is about the people who are there and the places they are from. That is part of the unique, creative things that the BBC can do. So the first thing is creative and the second is distribution, which we have touched on. We need to be where those audiences are.

I think we addressed this last year when we commissioned the portrayal and representation review, which is a really deep, insightful analysis of how the BBC could do better, in terms of working-class communities. There were several observations. One that really struck me about it is that currently when we commission we look at portrayal and diversity in terms of protected characteristics, and class and opinion are not protected characteristic. I think we need to widen the lens in how we address those sorts of issues when we commission dramas and everything else. The second big idea was that it needs to be authentic—there needs to be authenticity around it. To deliver that, we go back the question of moving commissioning out into those areas; then you get a better, more authentic representation of the people you are talking about.

This is the last question, you will be glad to hear. You have spoken about misinformation and disinformation throughout. As you said, they are very present in all our lives. Should the BBC have a new public purpose devoted to countering misinformation and disinformation?

I see the existing remit around due impartiality is about being factually accurate, independent and representative, but it is worth thinking about, in particular on the technical side. If the three pillars of what we are offering are audience value, economic value and sovereignty value, as part of the charter we should be looking at how we partner with others to fight misinformation and disinformation. There is a whole bunch of technical investment needed to spot misinformation—things like digital fingerprinting of synthetic content. There is a lot more that we can do there, but I want to be clear that we need the funding to do that, and we do not currently have all the technical expertise that we need. It is quite hard for any organisation that is not one of the big tech companies to hire the best technical talent. That is part of what we need. In partnership with the Government and other UK players like BT and so on, we could do a lot more.

That is interesting. So that collaboration obviously needs more exploration, in terms of how you do that.

I have spoken briefly to people like DSIT, BT, GCHQ and others at the beginning, because I am conscious that this is a question that we are all asking. I think the BBC can be part of the answer to that question.

Absolutely. Something that I question—one of my colleagues brought it up before—is the trust that the public have in you, which as we know is low. The YouGov survey from last year said that 51% from both left and right—it does not matter where—do not trust the BBC and what they say. When you are trying to counter misinformation and disinformation, is that not difficult?

It is correct to say that trust in the BBC has fallen. Actually, if you look around the world, trust in Governments, media and business has fallen everywhere. Although it has fallen, and in recent times has fallen by further than the trend, for reasons that you well understand, the BBC is still highly trusted. It is still the most trusted news source in the UK and around the world. We need to work harder to earn that trust. I think you earn the trust every single story that you cover, and that is the ethos that we need to have. So yes, trust levels have fallen, but the BBC remains highly trusted despite what is going on. Trust is falling as the media polarises, and that is why we need the BBC.

It is chicken and egg, isn’t it?

Yes.

How do you respond to the concern that the words misinformation and disinformation are themselves contested, and that a new purpose would and could create risks for the BBC?

Let me go back to your question. I think you are pushing against an open door. It is one of the central purposes of the BBC anyway to correct and tackle misinformation and disinformation, and that will increase trust. People need to rely on the BBC to deliver accurate, fair journalism, and to point out where it is not that. It sounds a bit circular, but we need the resources and funding to deliver that purpose. What we need is the resources to do it. As Matt quite rightly said, we need to invest in technology. We probably need partners to be able to do that. But we also need the funding to make it happen.

I think Demos said that the BBC needs to be strengthened, perhaps in this place through law. Perhaps that is something for us to explore and consider as well.

The battle between truth and misinformation is on and it is intensifying, and all of us—Government, media, the BBC in particular and technology companies—need to come together around that, and that is part of what I hope we can do under a refreshed charter.

Very good. Thank you so much for giving us so much of your time this morning, and for your patience in enduring the conditions, which are not—

They told me it was going to be a hot seat; I did not realise that was literal.

Yes, it has been a scorcher, but thank you very much for your time.

Can I just make a final observation to the Committee?

Of course you can.

You all know this, but in the 100-year history of the BBC, I think we have reached a fork in the road right now. If we take one path, we will become a smaller BBC and will be managing decline, and within 10 years’ time, we will not be competing. There is another path. We made the point about sovereignty, and I think it was Patrick Younge who said, “Put yourself 10 years into the future.” If the access to content is held by the Americans or Chinese, that is a real issue for digital sovereignty. We need to allow the people of this country access to programming about this country through a portal. The iPlayer is the best way to access it. Also, project yourself into a world where covid happens again and we are not there to gather the nation and inform them, and we have people who are perhaps anti-vaxxers, or have people who perhaps own things that may be the source of covid. That is not a situation we should find ourselves in. We really are at a fork in the road. With your recommendations that you will make to the Government, I hope you will encourage the sense that this is a moment of real jeopardy, and not just for the BBC, but for the public. We need media sovereignty, and we need a public service broadcaster of scale and with reliability in terms of funding to get down the right path.

Thank you very much; it was lovely to see you both today.